Muder and Vader stand facing the camera. Expressions as stoic as one might expect of a couple who had survived World War II relatively intact. Their home, which was originally a Dominican monastery 60 kilometers northeast of Paris, had been commandeered during the war for use as an R & R retreat for Nazi officers. Vadar, when he wasn’t overseeing the apple and pear orchards that covered the surrounding countryside, spent the rest of his life scouring Europe for the possessions that had been looted from their chateau. In his right hand is the ever-present cigar whose smell is so imprinted on my brain, that when I smell it anywhere else, I am instantly transported back to our time living in the gatehouse of the chateau. Muder is dressed to go to town. She wears a trim knee length coat and a small dark hat perched on her head. Together they look for all the world like clones of Winston Churchill and Ingrid Bergman.
I’m sure they had names. He was a Dutch Baron who had brought his beautiful Baroness to France to live before the war. My sister and I knew them as Muder and Vader (mother and father). They are our God parents. They had no natural children, though I think that Muder must have previously been married, because they had a stepson we called Uncle Lonnie. In pictures, he is a dashingly handsome, cigarette smoking young man. Uncle Lonnie took me to school each day on the back of his war-surplus motorcycle. The way my mother looks at his photo today, I suspect she may have had a crush on Lonnie.
I bring this story up because of an article in this morning’s paper describing a growing movement at universities to teach civility to college students. Citing a growing trend of incivility amongst students, including one incident that started in a bar and ended with the death of a student, universities are beginning to offer classes like George Mason University’s seminar in Professionalism and Civility. It seems that young people are making it to universities without having been taught, among other things, how to “play nice.”
My siblings and I were raised in a military family. While at times our lives resembled scenes from the movie “The Great Santini,” for the most part we lived as normal a life as a global-trotting family possibly could. All elders were our elders and were addressed as “Sir” or “Ma’m” as was appropriate. Us boys didn’t hit girls, at least not in the presence of elders, and the girls were expected to be young ladies at all times. Various forms of corporal punishment—gasp!—ensured that rules and expectations were carried out.
But living at the Chateau put a different dimension into our lives. Each afternoon, my sister and I visited Muder in the den of the Chateau for high tea. There, beneath the stuffed gaze of the boar’s head that hung over the fireplace, my sister and I learned the fine points of etiquette: how to pour tea, which bit of silver was used for which part of the meal, that gentlemen stood until the ladies were seated and how to assist a lady to sit without knocking her down, how to listen politely without interrupting. And so forth. Muder was quite stern during these lessons. But once they were over, and if we had performed adequately, we were given little candies and cookies and, best of all, Muder would sing French lullabies to us until we fell asleep.
Reading the article in the news, a wave of nostalgia came over me. We should all have Muders to teach us manners and civility.
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